Carl Wieck's preface to Refiguring Huckleberry Finn has perhaps the most
unusual opening to a work of Twain criticism in recent memory. He offers a quote
from Gerald Posner's Hitler's Children: Inside the Families of the Third
Reich, where young Norman Frank, son of Nuremberg convicted war criminal
Hans Frank, states that reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "ruined
me for the rest of the Third Reich" by piquing his sense of humane justice
(ix). The power of Twain's novel to transform individual perceptions of humanity,
as evidenced by this dramatic anecdote, establishes the thematic base on which
Wieck creates an intriguing and expansive work of criticism.

From this powerful preface, Wieck sets out to explore connections between
keenly felt evocations of humanity in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and the essence of the "wellsprings of the American spirit" (xiii).
He posits that Twain's novel and the American spirit share a rational humanity
necessary to a society that strives to make "decency, equality, and
freedom" available for all (xiii). While many critics have written
about such "Americaness," Wieck constructs his argument from areas
neglected by earlier critics, thereby infusing his chapters with fresh and
provocative arguments about Twain's novel.

Wieck begins his argument by shedding light on Twain's connections to
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Although William Howells named him
"the Lincoln of our literature," Wieck points out that surprisingly
few scholars expand on the direct links between Twain and these key figures
in American history. This observation inspires new reflections on how Huck
and Jim serve as contemporaneous expressions of the American spirit. The
duo continually declares a Jeffersonian independence from restrictive cultural
norms, thus developing a friendship based on Lincoln's Gettysburg assertion
that our nation is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal." While Wieck underscores the significance of the novel's dedication
to America's potential humanity, he tempers this observation by discussing
the nation's failures to live up to such lofty ideals.

Wieck introduces his analysis of the novel's satire with a discussion
about the parallels between Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Frederick
Douglass's writings, especially his Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, Written by Himself. Directly connecting Twain's friendship
with Douglass to the well educated, "white-shirted, free nigger"
derided by pap early in Huckleberry Finn, Wieck argues that several
recurrent themes in Twain's narrative directly emerge from his association
with the outspoken abolitionist. His investigation scrutinizes issues like
the scorching satire of Huck's discussion of the status of English servant
compared to American slaves, and the slippery ways that Twain places the
ideas of "whiteness" and "darkness." Theses compelling
examinations of the influences of Douglass, Jefferson, and Lincoln on Huckleberry
Finn lend cultural authority to the close readings of the novel that
make up the rest of Wieck's book.

Wieck throws the authority of these historical American paragons into
tension with the cultural authorities from which Huck and Jim spend much
of the novel attempting to break free. He portrays Huck's conscientious
struggle to accommodate his natural instincts about "rightness"
to society's claims for the rightness of slavery, racism, greed, and religion,
as a devastating commentary about how far America remains from reaching
its democratic potential.

Exploration of these tensions also generates a compelling reading of
the Evasion section of Huckleberry Finn. Building on Louis Budd's
observation that Tom's dishonesty and selfish manipulation of Jim is unmistakable
commentary on the "Southern question," Wieck asserts that the
Evasion section also foretells the shameful social inequality of America's
post-reconstruction era and forecasts that the nation would not address
this injustice for generations to come.

After addressing the "Southern question," Wieck turns his attention
to the perpetually rewarding study of irony in Huckleberry Finn. Wieck's
most compelling arguments breathe fresh life into episodes that have received
much critical attention. Seizing on Franklin Rogers's commentary that Twain
originally had not planned for the narrative to take a raft ride down the river,
he contends that the novel primarily shows Huck and Jim attempting to go against
the flow: against both the natural flow of the river and the equally inexorable
flow of society. Wieck also lingers over the exploration of the "Floating
House," skillfully calling attention to the ironic fact that the clothing
and Barlow knife liberated from the doomed house and used by Huck and Jim to
escape their old lives were originally connected with Pap's dead body. These
discussions, along with excellent chapters on the elusive duality of the narrator,
blackness and whiteness in the novel, and Twain's prefatory disclaimer, ensure
that scholars, educators and lovers of Twain's work will find Wieck's criticism
extraordinarily useful.

Even the few unconvincing arguments in Wieck's book still provoke thought.
His chapter, "The Figure Forty in Huckleberry Finn," occasionally
strains to attach significance to the appearance of the number throughout
the novel. Wieck acknowleges the common biblical associations with the figure
forty, connecting the slave bounty of forty dollars to Judas's bounty of
"thirty pieces of silver" for delivering Christ to the Romans,
and the Jim's gaining his freedom in the fortieth chapter to the Israelite's
wandering for forty years before gaining the promised land; however, he
lacks compelling support for his connection of the phrase "forty acres
and a mule" with the novel's text. The possibility of this link raises
interesting and relevant questions: particularly about the self and societal
deception implicit in Tom rewarding Jim with forty dollars as the novel
closes. Yet this link-culled from cultural speculation and conjecture about
the nebulous phrase "De Mule" in Twain's working notes-remains
too subtle for such a strong assertion.

In many ways Wieck's final chapter, "Knowledge and Knowing in Huckleberry
Finn," both traces aspects of Huck's intellectual and moral journey
and accounts for the novel's durable resonance in American culture. He argues
that Huck's escape from extensive formal schooling empowers the growth of
the practical wisdom and morality that he acquires by the end of the novel.
This practical wisdom, Wieck suggests, ultimately lies in Huck's ability
to expand his understandings of tolerance and humanity in the face of an
inflexible and often bigoted society. Such capacity for moral maturation,
literarily figured in Huck, directly evokes the democratic influences of
Jefferson, Lincoln and Douglass discussed early in Wieck's book. This is
the conclusion to which Wieck's criticism leads us: that the American spirit
ultimately exists in "refiguring" our identities in response to
our consciences.

This conclusion holds great promise for other Twain works as well. The
connections between Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and foundational
American political philosophy beg similar considerations of A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc, and other writings that negotiate themes of personal freedom. Thus,
Wieck's unusual preface functions not only to demonstrate the transformative
power of Huckleberry Finn, but it also acts as an invitation to rediscover
key aspects of our American roots in a notoriously cynical age. Wieck's
meditative analysis of the "vital human echo" heard in Huckleberry
Finn reinforces Twain's position as our most "American" author.